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Friday, November 22, 2013

Welcome to my second Quick Fix Friday! Today I will be showing you how I organized our medicine cabinet. This is not your traditional medicine cabinet, but a kitchen cabinet in which we store our medicine! In here we keep all of the child medications, adult medications, prescriptions, vitamins and supplements. Here is the before and then a completely clean slate..

First thing was to sort them into categories and weed out anything that was almost empty or expired. We had more than enough dosage caps (that's what they're called, right??), so I threw out some of those as well. I decided to keep all of my husband's supplements on the top shelf, but just straightened them up a little.

The middle shelf received a lazy susan for all of our vitamins and I put the few prescription medications to the right of that.

I sorted the remainder of the medications into three categories: Children's Medicine, Aches & Pains and Cough & Congestion. I put them into containers and labeled them.

They fit perfectly on the bottom shelf. One of the smaller containers has to be in the back, but no big deal.

And now at least TWO of my kitchen cabinets are organized the way I want them to be! You can see how I organized the cabinet under my kitchen sink here.

Friday, November 15, 2013

Welcome to my first Quick Fix Friday! Hopefully I will be able to get a post up every Friday from here on out. By "quick fix," I mean an organizing project that can be accomplished in a half an hour or less. Today I want to show you how I organized under our kitchen sink.

Here is the horrendous before picture.

Seriously?? This had been this way for months. I just had enough. Everything came out so that I could start with a blank slate.

I thought about what I actually go into this cabinet for on a daily basis and decided to keep ONLY those items. Previously, I had been using this cabinet to store all of the dusting sprays, window cleaners, bathroom cleaners, floors cleaners, etc. *side note: with 4 small children in our home, this cabinet most definitely has a childproof lock on it - just in case you were wondering!* Those items are NOT used daily. The only items allowed back in were items that are strictly used in this area. Dish detergent (liquid and pods), countertop cleaner, scrub pads, magic erasers, sponges and dish cloths. The only exception of non-daily items were all of my hand soaps. All of the other cleaners went into a cleaning caddy and found a new home in our laundry room.

All of the hand soaps are now contained in this white bin. I do believe I have a slight obsession with Bath & Body Works hand soaps. And candles. And Wallflowers. I probably need an intervention.

I put all of the dishwashing essentials along the left hand side. Extra liquid dish detergent ended up in a plastic container near the back. I took the pods from their packaging and put them in this flip top lidded container.

The right hand side is for all of our magic erasers, sponges and dish cloths. I put the dish cloths in a napkin holder that I picked up on clearance at Target. It's perfect!

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Our hall bathroom (and basically the only bathroom in our house that we actually use on a daily basis) is pretty tiny. But in order to cater to the needs of 6 people, you better believe that it is mighty. The only storage we have is 3 drawers in the vanity and an etagere behind the toilet. I feel like with that small amount of storage, it should be easy to keep organized. Well that was not the case before I made a few changes. Here are a few before shots of our messy shelves and drawers.

The larger drawer wasn't TOO bad, but it needed to be cleaned out a bit. I have the left side and the middle section. My husband has the right. In this drawer I keep my hair products and tools, some lotions and a few miscellaneous things. In the center I keep my daily face products and deodorant. My husband keeps razors, cologne, hair gel, shaving cream and deodorant in his side.

We keep tooth care items in the small left drawer.

I was keeping most of my makeup in the small right drawer, but it was a disaster to say the least. I could never find anything and my poor brushes were being destroyed. Oh, the horror!

So I purchased some acrylic cosmetic containers at Bed Bath & Beyond. I went through everything and got rid of outdated and broken makeup.

The only place the containers were going to fit was on a shelf on the etagere. I purchased this one from Bed Bath & Beyond a little over two years ago. Here's how it ended up when I put everything back.

Here are some close ups of the containers.

I really love it so much more than when it was in that tiny drawer! I can actually see all of my makeup now. It's obviously so much easier to find things and since it's organized so nicely, I don't mind having it on display for all to see. As for the old makeup drawer, it now stores my makeup palettes, nail clippers, magnifying mirrors, tweezers, etc.

The bottom shelf of the vanity is where we keep extra rolls of toilet paper and the children's stool. The scale stays tucked neatly on the floor beneath that shelf. We keep magazines in a magazine basket between the vanity and the toilet.

In the shower, we have a corner caddy for all of the essentials and we have a little bucket that is attached to the wall for the bath toys. Please don't mind the soap scum wall. I JUST cleaned it and dries like that. I am about to search Pinterest for a solution. Like. Right. Now.

There you have it. Our small, yet functional and organized bathroom. P.S. If you noticed that the after picture has a different wall color than the before, my wonderful husband is to blame. He touched up some areas with a completely different color paint only to realize that we don't have anymore of the original color left. So, he ended up repainting the whole bathroom. Oh, men!

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Well, actually, I cleaned it out yesterday. My closet has been in shambles for as long as I can remember. I have been wearing the same 20% or so of my wardrobe for more than two years. Two pregnancies that were pretty much back to back are to blame for that. I still had maternity clothing hanging in my closet and I haven't worn them in over 7 months, but I still haven't gotten down to the size of the majority of my clothing. Anyway, everything was collecting dust and lacking any kind of order. It was driving me crazy. Our "master" closet is the reach-in kind with sliding doors. I do not like the size OR the doors. Oh well, not much you can do. Here are some befores:

The first thing I did was take every single thing out of the closet. Then I vacuumed the floor and dusted off the shoe shelves and the top shelf.

I went through every single piece before putting things away. I gathered quite a few things that I plan to sell on a local yard sale Facebook group or at yard sales next summer. Those went in bins and ended up in the storage area of our basement for now. I have A LOT of smaller pants sizes that don't fit at the moment, but will fit as soon as I get my working out/dieting act together. I have quite a range when it comes to pants sizes. So I put them all into piles by size. My current size and the next size down are the only pants that made it back into my closet. Everything else went into the hamper that we have in our bedroom. We never use it for dirty clothing anyway. So pants went into the hamper for storage until I can fit into them again and out came a large pile of sweaters. I purchased some sweater bins from The Container Store a few months ago, and now I finally put them to use! I folded them all and divided them between the two bins. Those ended up on the top shelf of the closet, along with two piles of sweatshirts. The clothing went back in like this.. from left to right: Camisoles, cardigans, tank tops, short sleeved work shirts, short sleeved casual shirts, 3/4 length shirts, button down shirts, sweaters, sweatshirt jackets, pants and dresses. I did my best to organize the shirts by color from lightest to darkest within their specific categories. The pants are just in order by size from left to right. I bought the pants hangers from Ikea and I LOVE them! Before, I had the pants folded over regular shirt hangers. This solution is much better looking and better for the pants as well.

My shoe situation was so messy before. I was just throwing them all on the floor of the closet instead of using the shoe shelves. I ended up being able to remove one shelf because I just don't have that many shoes these days. I blame that on having 4 children over the span of 7 years. I wore the same flats nearly every single workday for 3 of my pregnancies. My favorite pair of heels finally had to go in the garbage a few months ago. I wear flip flops whenever I have the chance. I am just not big on shoes anymore. Oh well. My closet and my wallet are better off without so many shoes.

My purse collection has also dwindled over the years. I have been using the same summer purse for the past two summers and now I am back to my same winter purse for the second year in a row. I decided to keep my smaller "going out" purses, a wristlet and a wallet in a small basket on the shoe shelf. My summer purse and one other purse are in their dust bags and fit perfectly inside my Vera Bradley weekender bag. That fits nicely on the top shelf. I have two crossbody purses that I use occasionally if I feel like switching over to them on a day of errands or what have you. I hung them on hooks behind my dresses on the right wall of the closet. I hung my belts and my lone scarf on the left wall.

And that's about all there is to our "master" closet. If you're wondering where all of my husband's stuff is, it is downstairs. We have a small walk-in closet in the basement and that is his closet. He doesn't mind having to go down there everyday to pick out his clothing. There really isn't any other choice. I do long for a nice big walk-in closet in the master bedroom where we would be able to fit all of our stuff together, but we are making do with what we have for now. And now that I have gone through all of my clothing, maybe I will have a bit more motivation to lose weight and be able to fit in more than 20% of it!

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ABOUT ME

Hello! My name is Ashley and I am a full-time working wife and mother of 4! I am on an everlasting mission to organize every inch of our small ranch home. With 6 people living in just over 1400 square feet, this proves to be quite the challenge, as we have a lot of stuff and not a lot of space! Thank you so much for stopping by to read about my adventures in organizing, cleaning and home decor!